The electoral rise of populism in the Nordic countries

One lesson from the Nordic experience might be that social democrats should acknowledge the drivers of populism with-out buying into the identity threat perspective

Since
2010, when the Sweden Democrats (SD) have gained 5.7 per cent of the
vote and 20 seats in the Swedish parliament, a (right-wing) populist
party has been present in all Nordic parliaments. Recent polls show a
further increase in support for the SD. Despite several scandals in late
2012, the party has become Sweden’s third largest party enjoying
support from about 9 per cent of the electorate. The SD are, however,
still the most inexperienced and smallest of the Nordic populist
parties.

In Norway and Denmark, two Progress parties had already
emerged in the “earthquake election” of 1973. However, while the
Norwegian Progress Party (FrP) has become fairly integrated in the
Norwegian party system after years of ideological confrontations and
organisational disputes, the Danish party disappeared from Danish
politics in the 90’s only to be replaced by the Danish People’s Party
(DF). In the most recent elections in Norway and Denmark, the populist
parties gained 22.9 and 12.7 per cent of the votes respectively. These
results make FrP the second largest party in Norway, and DF the third
largest party in Denmark. However, while the support for the DF seems to
have stabilised , recent polls in Norway indicate that the Conservative
party will replace FrP as the largest right-wing party in the
forthcoming election in September 2013. The FrP has already suffered
substantial electoral losses in the local election (down to 12 per cent)
which was held in the immediate aftermath of the lethal right-wing
terrorist attacks on July 22, and current polls give the party no more
than 16-17 per cent.

In Finland, the True Finns (PS) experienced
huge electoral success in 2011, comparable to FrPd in 1973, Lijst Pim
Fortuyn in the 2002 Dutch election, and Forza Italia in the 1994 Italian
election. While the PS received 4 per cent in 2007, 19 per cent voted
for the party four years later. Recently the party received 18.3 per
cent in a nationwide opinion poll, making the party slightly bigger than
the Social Democrats.

Party family with variation

Although
we might put these four parties into one party family, they differ not
only in terms of electoral success, but also with regard to historical
legacy, ideology and organisational strength.

The FrP, being
rooted in an anti-tax and anti-bureaucracy undercurrent, is far more
right-wing in economic policy, more pro-EU and less hostile to
globalisation compared to the other parties. In fact, except for its
pronounced anti-establishment feature and excessive focus on
Islamisation, the party resembles continental, as well as Nordic,
conservative parties. The party has also built a more traditional and
professional party organisation with quite a few members and local
branches. DF also has an anti-tax legacy, but has nevertheless
transformed into a more typical populist radical right party focusing on
issues such as Islam, immigration, national identity, law and order and
anti-EU. DF’s party organisation is also more top-down, less
comprehensive (in terms of members and local branches) and its members
are less active.

The Swedish party, SD, is the only successful
populist party in the Nordic region which was – and to some extent still
is – embedded in the extreme right subculture. Although the party – and
in particular the party leadership – has copied DF and worked hard in
recent years to broaden its appeal, it is still by and large a
“single-issue” party appealing primarily to anti-immigrant sentiments.
Its organisational features are less studied, but formally it is more
democratic than DF and it has increased its number of members
substantially in recent years. The PS is the only party with a more
left-wing populist undercurrent – or what may be labelled “agrarian
populism”. The predecessor of the PS, the Finnish Rural party was formed
in 1959 as a splinter party from the Agrarian party to protect rural
small holders and their traditional values.

Contemporary Finnish
populism is still influenced by this tradition, making it less hostile
towards state intervention and consequently more left-wing on economic
issues. In terms of party organisation, the PS has to a large extent
been built up around the charismatic leader Timo Soini. However, just as
with the other populist parties, PS, too, seems to work systematically
in penetrating local communities organisationally.

The
ideology and legacy – and perhaps also organisation (at least in the
Danish case) –do constitute an important backdrop in better
understanding the different patterns of mainstream reactions in the
Nordic countries.

Reactions of mainstream parties

Faced
with the rise of populist parties and new issues (e.g. most notably
immigration and national identity), mainstream parties can – in theory –
choose between at least four different strategies: ignore, isolate,
adopt or collaborate. First, mainstream parties need to decide whether
they will disengage or engage. If they decide to disengage they can
either (S1) ignore the party hoping it will simply go away or they can
try to (S2) isolate the party either legally (as often discussed in
Germany) or politically (as in the Belgian or French case). If they
decide to engage, they can either (S3) adopt the policy or issues put
forward by populist parties or they can (S4) collaborate with the
populist party in order to gain office (as in the Austrian, Dutch and
Italian case). What have been the strategies in the Nordic countries?

Sweden

In
Sweden, the mainstream reactions come pretty close to political
isolation – or what has been called cordon sanitaire elsewhere. While
the former populist party New Democracy functioned as a support party
for the centre-right government in the early 90’s, this is seen as
completely unacceptable with regard to the SD, given the party’s legacy
and illiberal ideology. “We shall not collaborate with the SD”, was the
message from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt after the election, and
the Greens, initially forming a pre-electoral coalition with the Social
Democrats and the Left, agreed to collaborate with the centre-right
government in order to make sure that the SD could not blackmail the
government on immigration policy.

However, given that the current
right-centre government is a few seats short of having a majority in
parliament it is difficult to completely ignore the SD. As a result of
the ‘hung parliament’ it should come as no surprise that there has been
contact between the government and the SD, though it is still informal,
sporadic and marginal.

The most obvious impact from the SD’s
presence in national politics so far is probably related to the public
discourse. SD’s position as a parliamentary party has made it difficult
for the mainstream parties to stick to the ‘defuse’ strategy, simply
because the SD continuously are trying to politicising the issue.
Moreover, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the party might be helped
the modern mass media, which values (new) political conflicts. For
instance, in the party leader debate at the beginning of October 2012,
the TV program Agenda for the first time asked the question “How much
immigration can Sweden handle?”. Not only was this a strong indicator of
increased saliency of the immigration issue, but it also shows how fast
the populist framing of this particular issue is adopted by mainstream
actors.

Denmark

In Denmark, mainstream parties of
the right tried to defuse the immigration issue in the 80’s, before they
started adopting a more restrictive issue position in the 90’s and
2000’s, even before DF was founded. Not surprisingly, the DF was quickly
accepted as a support party for the right-wing government – consisting
of the Liberal Party (V) and the Conservative party (K) – which took
office in 2001. The prolonged collaboration between the governmental
parties and DF, which lasted until 2011, made observers refer to the
Danish government as the ’VKO-government‘, in which ‘O’ stands for DF.
During this period, DF obtained a powerful position, influencing several
policy areas (most notably a more restrictive immigration and
integration policy). Representative membership surveys in 2000 and 2012
also show that the DF has become less and less disliked among Danish
party members, particularly among members of the other mainstream
right-wing parties. While half of the members of V strongly disliked the
DF in 2000, no more than 14 per cent did so in 2012. Similar figures
can be observed with regard to K. Among the centre-left parties (EL, SF,
S and RV), the antipathy is still strong: more than 80 per cent say
they strongly dislike the DF.

Nevertheless, even the Social
Democrats seem to have adopted some of the DF’s policy positions in the
2000’s, which is partly related to the fact that the restrictive faction
within the party seems to be slightly bigger than the liberal faction.
In short, the Danish experience can be characterised by mainstream
parties collaborating with the populist right and all big parties
adopting at least parts of the DF’s policies. The DF’s success in terms
of policy influence and electoral support made the strategy called “one
foot in-one foot out” an attractive model for other populist parties
elsewhere (e.g. PVV in the Netherlands). This strategy might be
abandoned in the coming years, as Pia Kjærsgaard promised the party
members (and voters) that the DF will seek office in the future when she
resigned earlier this year. However, it should be noted that the
current party leader, Kristian Thulesen Dahl, moderated this
office-seeking strategy somewhat in a recently conducted interview,
saying the party still dislikes politics of compromise.

Norway

In
Norway, the relationship between the FrP and the other non-socialist
parties is not as formalised or harmonious as it was between the DF and
the two mainstream right-wing parties. The centre-left and centre-right
governments in Norway have always kept the FrP at arm’s length. Firstly,
they have not exclusively made state budget agreements with the FrP,
but also with the Labour party in two out of nine occasions since 1985.
Secondly, all mainstream parties have been morally and ideologically
criticising FrP. However, in 2009, the Conservatives declared
officially for the first time that they could enter office with the FrP,
and in 2012 the Liberals and the Christian People’s Party also somewhat
reluctantly opened the door for the FrP. Looking at the changing levels
of sympathy among party members, this development does not come as a
surprise. Among the Conservatives, the share of members who strongly
dislike the FrP has never been quite high; 13 per cent in 1991 and 2000,
and only 9 per cent in 2009. Amongst the Liberals, the figures have
dropped from 75 to 66 per cent from 1991 to 2009, and in the Christian
People’s Party from 64 to 23 per cent. The opposition against the FrP is
simply eroding.

At the local level, FrP has been tolerated for a
long time. The party has primarily collaborated with the Conservative
Party, most notably in the capital city, Oslo. However, in recent years,
collaboration patterns with left-wing parties have also been observed.
While there were a few examples of technical collaboration (i.e.
non-political agreements of power-sharing) between Labour and the FrP
after the 2003 local elections with the two parties collaborating in 13
municipalities, in which four of them expanded to include political
agreements after the 2007 local elections. Politically, Norwegian
mainstream parties have somewhat half-heartedly tried to defuse the
immigration issue. However, in recent years, both the Conservatives and
the Labour have adopted some of the FrP’s policies, though they still
shy away from the conflict perspective advocated by the FrP.

Finland

In
Finland, the mainstream reactions towards populism are quite different
than in the other three countries. Not only does Finland have a long
history of surplus majority governments including the former populist
Finnish Rural Party in the 80’s, the current Prime Minister, Jyrki
Katainen, did everything he could to give the PS governmental
responsibility after its successful election in 2011. However, knowing
how difficult such a position can be for a populist party, the leader
Timo Soini (who, by the way, has written academically on populism)
rejected the invitation arguing that the party could not accept the
European Union’s economic support to Portugal. According to Soini
himself, it was “a hard decision to make” and he underlined that the
party truly tried to negotiate. The PS is not only different from the
other populist parties in that it rejects governmental positions, it
also differs in the sense that it would prefer collaborating with the
agrarian Centre Party and the Social Democrats and not the other
right-wing parties.

Conclusions

In
short, the reactions from mainstream parties to the rise of populist
parties have differed substantially across the Nordic countries. While
Swedish parties have followed the Belgian and French models of adopting a
cordon sanitaire vis-à-vis the populist contender, the Danish
mainstream right have been closer to the Austrian and Italian model of
collaboration and adoption of policy positions. Norway seems to be
located somewhere in between, though Norwegian mainstream parties have
chosen a strategy which more closely resembles the Danish than the
Swedish case. Finland is yet a different story, and has to be
interpreted in consideration of PS’ legacy and the tradition of
so-called inclusive Finnish rainbow coalitions.

So, what is the
best strategy – based on the Nordic experience – of containing populist
parties? How should mainstream parties position themselves? These
questions are truly hard to answer, not only because the national
specificity (e.g. role of the media and other parties, previous
mainstream policy and real problems of unemployment and immigration)
matters a lot, but also because the answer depends on what is seen as
the main objective; attracting votes, maintaining internal cohesion,
promoting (the best) policy or gaining office?

The Nordic
experience does not present any straightforward recipe on how to deal
with the rise of populist parties. Different strategies have been put
forward at different times in different countries: political isolation
and confrontation in Sweden, collaboration and adaptation in Denmark,
confrontation and partial adaptation in Norway and attempts at inclusion
in Finland. Despite these different strategies, populist parties have –
in all countries – increased their support and been able to politicise
their main issue(s).

Like elsewhere in Europe, social democratic
parties do not seem to benefit electorally by trying to “steal” the
immigration issue from the populist right. Moreover, such policy change
might cause problems for any kind of broad left-wing alliance. Instead,
social democratic parties should try to politicise economic and welfare
issues as a way of confronting mainstream right and populist right
parties. In other words, they need to engage in what the Schattschneider
once called the “conflict of conflicts”. After all, we know that
populist parties in the Nordic countries seem to perform worse when
economic issues dominate the agenda.

However, without making it
too complicated, it should also be noted that social democratic parties
in some countries cannot afford to ignore problems of immigration and
integration. Given that social democratic parties do not control the
agenda alone, the strategy of ignoring the issue may move them into a
defensive position when other right-wing parties (e.g. Denmark) or the
media (e.g. Sweden) successfully politicise populist issues. In such
cases, social democratic parties could perhaps learn from the Norwegian
party, which has acknowledged “the problem” without buying into the
“identity threat perspective” put forward by the populist parties.
Anders Ravik Jupskås is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo.

1 The Norwegian Party was initially called Anders Lange’s Party, but adopted the same name as its Danish counterpart in 1977.
2
Calculating the mean support from three different polls (DR 24.01.13,
Berlingske baromenter 27.01.13, Politiken 19.01.13) shows that the
support for DF in January 2013 is about 14 per cent.
3 Downs,
William M. 2001. "Pariahs in their midst: Belgian and Norwegian parties
react to extremist threats." West European Politics 24:23-42.
4 The
Conservatives have always been sceptical about the sustainability of FrP
economic policy, i.e. less taxes and more welfare, and the Christian
People’s Party and the Liberals have criticised the anti-immigration
rhetoric and environmental policy.

Comments

Helen

09 May 2013 22:00

Great article, simply great and extremely useful, thank you very much!

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